SOME ACCOUNT 



OF 



Camden's Rise and Growth 



SOME ACCOUNT 



OF 



Camden's Rise and growth 



BY 

HOWARD M. COOPER 

ti 



rkad before the 

Camden County Historicai. Society 

June 13th, 1899 



CAMDEN, N. J.: 
S. CHEW C& SONS, PRINTERS 

1899 



Some Account of Camden^s Rise and 

Growth* 




'E must be painstaking, indeed, who can glean any- 
. thing from the field of history wherein Isaac Mickle, 
Dr. Fisler and Judge Clement have gathered, and I 
can only hope, that in collecting under one head widely 
scattered information, I may be able to refresh 5-our knowl- 
edge of some of the local history of our good city. 

In 1618 Lord De La Warr, sailing along the Atlantic 
coast on his return to Virginia from England, died at sea 
opposite the mouth of " a goodly and noble river," which, 
as a perpetual monument to his memory, forever indicating 
the place of his death, was thence called the Delaware. 
Sailing up this broad river in 1631, noting the creeks and 
estuaries emptying into it, the Dutch commander, De Vries, 
discovered, about one hundred miles from its mouth, on the 
eastern shore, a large thickly wooded island, which he 
called Jacques Eylandt. The Swedes, coming some seven 
or eight years after, observing the same isle, with much 
better taste called it by its Indian name, Aquikanasra. 
Upon that island we are gathered to-night. By the concur- 
rent testimony of the early Dutch and Swedish writers it 
was bounded on the west and north by the Delaware; on 
the east by what the Indians called the Asoroches river, the 
Dutch the Timmerkill, the Swedes the Hiorte-Kilen— our 
Cooper's creek; and on the south by the Quinquorenning of 
the Indians, the Graef Ernest of the Dutch —our Newton 



creek. Whether these early historians were absolutely cor- 
rect in their geography or not, it will not seem so impossi- 
ble that the waters of Cooper's creek once had an outlet 
into Newton creek, to any one who will carefully observe 
the topograph}' of the land along the Haddonfield turnpike 
about where the White Horse road branches off, and note 
on the one hand the ravine across Harleigh Cemetery, that, 
even now, where its upper end has been filled for a road- 
way, puts up almost to the turnpike, and a little bej^ond, 
on the other hand, winding through the low land skirting 
the road, the small rivulet that is the head of the north 
branch of Newton creek, with only the narrow water-shed 
along which the Haddonfield turnpike runs dividing them. 
Seeing this, and recollecting how universally the cutting off 
of the forests lessens the rain fall and diminishes the streams, 
the observer will hesitate before accusing the early Dutch 
and Swedish discoverers of anticipating Munchausen. 

Though they explored, neither the Dutch nor the 
Swedes settled here where the Mseroahkong tribe of the 
Delaware Indians lived, as their fathers had before them, 
undisturbed by the fact that across the great water a humble 
shepherd, aroused by the light within him to God's call, 
was preaching the absolute equality of man, and the entire 
peaceableness of God's Kingdom, and was drawing down 
upon himself and upon those whose consciences, awakened 
by his calls, were in numbers joining him, the oppression 
and the ire of those who profited by caste and lived by the 
sword. Until the persecution in England drove the Friends 
to West Jersey for asylum, these Indians, under Arasapha, 
their king, with their village at Cooper's Point, were the 
only inhabitants within our limits. 

Who first of the English emigrants made the future 
Camden his home is uncertain, but it was probably Richard 
Arnold or William Cooper. Few traces remain of Richard 



Arnold, who seems to have left no descendants in these 
parts. William Cooper, ancestor of many families that still 
cluster about his choice of a home, came from England 
in 1679 ^^d stopped for about a year at Burlington, before 
he chose his permanent residence. Passing up and down 
the Delaware, the bold bluff, heavily wooded with pine 
timber at the point where the river, sharply curving, re- 
ceives the stream called by the Swedes the Hiorte-Kilen, or 
Deer Creek, from the many deer seen along its banks, and 
along which grew " peach trees and the sweet smelling sas- 
safras tree," striking his fancy, he fixed upon it as his 
future abode, and called it " Pyne Poynte." His name, 
however, soon attached itself permanently to both point 
and creek. He located at Cooper's Point in the Spring of 
1681, building his house well out on the river's edge, just 
below the mouth of the creek, a site long years ago washed 
away by the encroaching tide. 

Recognizing the brotherhood of the Indians and their 
right to the soil that they and their fathers hunted over and 
possessed undisputed, the commissioners sent over by the 
proprietors of West Jersey bought of them their right from 
Oldman's creek to Assunpink, securing their title by three 
deeds, the earliest of which, dated September loth, 1677, 
covered Camden's territory, and extended from Timber to 
Rancocas creek. William Cooper, further to satisfy the 
tribe at Cooper's Point, paid them for the right they still 
claimed, and received from them a deed executed by Tal- 
lacca, their chief, and witnessed by several of their tribe. 
Returning the red man's trust and friendliness with honesty 
and fair dealing, Camden's early settlers found them alwaj-s 
friends, and no tales of Indian massacre blot our history. 

Thus was commenced, at the very outset, that never- 
varying policy of justness in all her dealings with the Indians 
that has given to our fair State such enviable and excep- 



tional fame, enabling Samuel L. Southard eloquently to say: 
*' It is a proud fact in the history of New Jersey, that every 
part of her soil has been obtained from the Indians by fair 
and voluntary purchase and transfer, a fact that no other 
State in the Union, not even the land which bears the name 
of Penn, can boast of," 

Before the settlement of our over-shadowing neighbor of 
Brotherly I/Ove, a few other scattering Friends, following Wil- 
liam Cooper, began to locate in the neighborhood of his home; 
and as they had braved the perils of the ocean and of the 
wilderness, and torn themselves away from all ties of home, 
kindred and early associations, for the boon of worshipping 
God uninterruptedly in the way that to them seemed right, 
they immediately, though but two or three gathered in His 
name, opened a meeting for His worship, the first record of 
which is this minute of the Monthly Meeting held at Thomas 
Gardiner's house, Burlington, Seventh month (September) 
5th, i6Si : "Ordered that Friends of Pyne Poynte have a meet- 
ing on every Fourth-day, and to begin at the second hour, at 
Richard Arnold's house." Arnold's house stood, as shown 
on Thomas Sharp's map of A. D. 1700, a short distance 
above the mouth of Newton creek, and thus, within its log 
walls, at the very beginning of the settlement, was the first 
of Camden's ever widening circle of churches established. 
It was the only " meeting " between Salem and Burlington, 
and the third in priority in West Jersey, and has been kept 
up by Friends without a lapse from that time to the present. 

Shortly afterward the meeting was held at Pyne Poynte, 
at the house of William Cooper, a minister, and continued 
there until the arrival of the " Irish Friends," who settled 
at Newton in the spring of 1682, when, as Thomas Sharp, 
their historian, quaintly says, "Immediately there was a 
meeting sett up and kept at the house Mark Nevvby, and in a 
short time it grew and increased, unto which William 



Cooper and family, that live at the Poynte, resorted, and 
sometimes the meeting was kept at his house, who had 
been settled sometime before." 

But as the Newton Friends were much more numerous 
than the few scattered families about the Poynte, it was 
more convenient to most of the members for the place of 
w^orship to be located at their settlement; and in 1 68 4 the 
first building devoted to religious meetings in Gloucester 
county was built on the middle branch of Newton creek, at 
what is now West Collingsw^ood Station, on the Reading 
Railroad to Atlantic City. 

By 1686 quite a number of emigrants had arrived in this 
part of West Jersey and settled about Red Bank, Woodbury, 
Arwames or Gloucester, Newton and the Poynte, and felt 
strongly the inconvenience of having to go all the way to 
Salem or Burlington to transact their public business. 
Accordingly, on the 26th of May, 1686, the proprietors, free- 
holders and inhabitants of the " Third and Fourth Tenths," 
that is, the territory between Pensauken and Oldman's 
creek, acting in the spirit of pure Democracy, met at 
Arwames and formed that quaintly curious frame of county 
government, having only ten short paragraphs, that is still 
preserved in the original book of minutes, in the Clerk's 
office of Gloucester county, at Woodbury. 

"This was the origin of Old Gloucester, the only county 
in New Jersey that can deduce its existence from a direct 
and positive compact between her inhabitants."* 

The action of the people in thus forming their county 
organization, without any authority of the Legislature, was, 
after having been indirectly recognized in one or two other 
laws, directly sanctioned in 1694, by an act of the Legisla- 
ture, establishing the boundaries that they had themselves 
chosen, and adopting their title of the county of Gloucester. 

*Mickle, page 25. 



The necessity of a regular ferry to Philadelphia being 
very soon felt by the new settlers, they applied to their new 
Court, at Gloucester, to license one, which, on the first day 
of First month, (March) 16S7, it did, as appears by this 
minute : " It is proposed to ye Bench y-t a ff erry is very 
needfull and much wanted from Jersey to Philadelphia, and 
y-t William Roydon's house is look-t upon as a place con- 
venient, and the said William Royden, a person suitable for 
that imploy, and therefore an order desired from ye Bench 
that a fferry may be there fixed, &c., to which ye Bench 
assents and refer to ye grand jury to methodize ye same and 
fix ye rates thereof. ' ' This they proceeded to do in a very 
leisurely manner, for not until one year afterwards, on the 
first day of the First month, 1688, did they issue their license 
to William Royden and his assigns, permitting and appoint- 
ing * ' that a common passage or ferry for man and beast be 
provided, fixed and settled in some convenient and proper 
place between ye mouths or entrances of Cooper's creek and 
Newton creek," within which limits " all other persons are 
desired and requested to keep no other common or public 
passage or ferry. ' ' The license also fixed the ferriage at not 
more than 6d. per head, for each person, and I2d. for man 
and horse or other beast, except swine, calves and sheep, 
" which shall pay only six pence per head and no more." 

Thus was established the original of our present ample 
ferry facilities. It was located near the foot of Cooper 
street, its boats being only open flat-boats propelled by oars 
or sails. A few years afterwards it was purchased by Wil- 
liam Cooper, and for more than one hundred years there- 
after Camden was everywhere known as Cooper's Ferries^ 
To-day our Royden street perpetuates the memory of Cam- 
den's first ferryman. 

The establishment of the county only supplied a part 
of the necessary political machinery, and so on the first day 



of June, 1695, the Grand Jury, with the assent of the Bench, 
and in accordance with an act of the then last Assembly, 
constituted the constablewick or township of Newton to 
extend from "the lowermost branch of Cooper's creek to 
ye southerly branch of Newton creek bounding Gloucester," 
but fixing no bounds on the east. With their local govern- 
ment thus completed, the people in these parts remained 
content for one hundred and thirty-three years. Thus was 
created old Newton township, which, after having its fairest 
portion cut off in the creation of Haddon township, was 
finally, after a life of one hundred and seventy-six years, 
swallow^ed up by its own progeu}^ and obliterated from the 
map in 1871, when Camden's revised charter was obtained. 

R.obert Turner, an Irish Friend, residing in Philadel- 
phia, owned large estates in Pennsylvania and in East and 
West Jersey, among which were some large tracts of land 
within the present limits of Camden. In 1696 he sold to 
John Kaighinfour hundred and fifty-five acres, and the next 
year five hundred and ten acres, lower down the river, to 
Archibald Mickle. John Kaighin came originally from the 
Isle of Man and Archibald Mickle from Ireland. Both set- 
tled for a short time in Philadelphia, but each moved to 
Jersey on making these purchases. John Kaighin chose for 
the site of his house the Point that bears his name to this 
day, and shortly afterwards built, with bricks brought from 
England, a substantial house, modeled after an English 
farm house, which, enlarged and so greatly changed as to 
have lost all its original appearance, and now numbered 
112^ and ii30 South vSecond street, is probably the oldest 
house in Camden. In front of it yet stand two yew trees, 
which Elizabeth Haddon brought from England and gave 
to John Kaighin about 1704. 

William Cooper, John Kaighin and Archibald Mickle soon 
became prominent men, and their descendants gradually 



lO 

increased their possessions until they owned all the land 
within the limits of our city before its absorption of the 
town of Stockton, the Coopers' land extending southward 
to Ivine street, so-called, because it marked the line between 
them and the Kaighins; the Kaighins' land extending south- 
ward from Line street to Little Newton creek, popularly 
known as the Line ditch, because it was the boundary 
between them and the Mickles, and the Mickles extending 
southward from Line ditch to Newton creek, and every 
title in Camden to-day, between Cooper's creek and the 
Delaware, can be traced back to a Mickle, a Kaighin or a 
Cooper. 

At the opening of the Eighteenth century the smoke curl- 
ing from less than a dozen clearings by the water's edge 
pointed out the forerunners more than two centuries ago of 
our present expanding town. A score of years of hard 
work had passed since they landed; they had gathered 
about them some few of the comforts they had left behind 
across the seas; they had " sett upp " the meeting for the 
free worship of God that caused them to leave friends and 
relations and "transport themselves and familys into this 
wilderness part of America ' ' ; they had established ferry 
communication with their friends across the river; they had 
settled their free form of local civil government, and, hav- 
ing recognized the right of the aborigines to the soil and 
treated them as its owners, they were living in most harmon- 
ious relations with them, and gradually increasing their 
clearings they were quietly prospering. Their growth was 
only the stead}'^ increase of an industrious population. For 
after the arrival and settlement of the Irish Friends at New- 
ton there was no great influx of emigrants to this part of 
West Jerse}^, Philadelphia attracting the greater part of the 
new comers. Occasionally a family would move across the 
river, but down to the time of the Revolution the popula- 



11 

tion was mainly the descendants of those who were swept 
over here on that swell of migration caused by religious 
persecution in England in the Seventeenth century, so that 
when the Declaration of Independence had been made, 
while Philadelphia had become the first town in the 
colonies, our territory was yet largely woodland, dotted by 
a few farm houses and intersected by but one or two roads. 

However, in 1773, Jacob Cooper, a merchant living in 
Philadelphia, and a lineal descendant of the first William 
Cooper, foreseeing the future town, employed Thompson, a 
Philadelphia surveyor, to lay out forty acres into a town 
plot. A Whig, sympathizing with his fellow Whigs in their 
struggles to obtain from their mother country that represen- 
tation which they claimed should ever accompany taxation, 
and venerating those Englishmen who, believing in the 
justness of this demand of the colonies, had the courage to 
openly avow their belief, Jacob Cooper named his new town 
Camden, in honor of that powerful champion of constitu- 
tional liberty and firm advocate of fair dealing with the 
colonies, who has been called the right arm of Lord Chat- 
ham, Charles Pratt, first Earl of Camden. In the infant 
town thus christened only six streets ran north and south. 
King, Queen, Whitehall, Cherry, Cedar and Pine, inter- 
sected at right angles at the Delaware side by Cooper and 
Market streets only, but on the eastern side by Plum also. 

With that same admixture of loyalty and defiance so 
marked in almost all the earlier steps taken by our revolu- 
tionary forefathers, while naming his town after one of the 
foremost champions of the American cause in England, 
Jacob Cooper honored his King and Queen in the naming of 
his streets, and through all the bitter feeling engendered by 
our two struggles with the mother country his nomenclature 
remained unchanged. It was not until May 24th, 1&22, 
that, adopting a new system, by ordinance of Council, 



12 

King, Queen, Whitehall, Cherry, Cedar and Pine became 
Front, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth streets. But 
it was left until the days of pretentious change that, in the 
very mockery of old associations, on Camden's one hun- 
dredth anniversary, time-honored Plum was dropped for 
meaningless Arch. 

Almost immediately after Camden was planned the 
Revolution broke out and the struggle for independence and 
existence as a free people absorbing all other energies, 
scarcely a thing was done to promote the growth of the 
little town whose birth was so unheralded. 

During the whole of the occupation of Philadelphia by 
the British, Cooper's Point was held by them as an outpost, 
General Abercrombie having his headquarters in the old 
gambrel-roofed farm house, still standing at the head of 
Point street, with the stone in which is cut the date of its 
erection, 1734, still in place in its gable end, while an 
Knglish and several Scotch and Hessian regiments were 
quartered at the old ferry house, at the foot of Cooper street, 
torn down in 1882. The British lines extended along the 
river front from Cooper's Point down nearly to Market 
street; thence up to Sixth street; thence diagonally about 
northeast to Cooper's creek, portions of their redoubts 
remaining for many years afterwards. The Hessians, under 
Count Donop, two thousand five hundred strong, crossed at 
Cooper's Point late in the afternoon of the 21st of October, 
1777, on their way to the battle of Red Bank, and the strag- 
gling survivors, after their defeat, returned to Philadelphia 
the same way. laying directly opposite Philadelphia, Cam- 
den's territory was constantly overrun, and its farming pop- 
ulation harrassed and alarmed by detached parties of British 
soldiery skirmishing and foraging, taking what they wished. 
When the British fleet arrived at Philadelphia, their men-of- 
war anchored on the Pennsylvania side, while their convoys 



13 

and tenders, numbering about one hundred, filled the Jersey 
channel, and cannon balls from their guns are preserved to- 
day, as valued relics, by the descendants of those along our 
shores, whom the wanton firing greatly alarmed if it did not 
much damage. 

Although Camden is not distinguished as one of the 
battlefield of the Revolution, yet the ground on which the 
non-resisting followers of Fox have placed their humble 
meeting-house was twice the scene of warlike manoeuvers. 
In the early part of 1778, Gen. Anthony Wayne, being sent 
with a body of soldiers into the lower counties of our State 
to collect horses and cattle for the American army, with his 
usual fierce and bold aggressiveness, soon made the enemy 
everywhere dread his onslaught; and Colonel Stirling, with 
a regiment of the Queen's Rangers, one of the best in the ser- 
vice, was sent to Haddonfield to watch him. Hearing that 
he had left Mount Holly to attack them, the British, fully 
believing discretion to be the better part of valor when 
" Mad Anthony " was about, hastily retreated, never stop- 
ping until they reached, late at night, the shelter of their 
earthworks at Cooper's Point, although " the night was un- 
commonly severe and a cold sleet fell the whole waj^ from 
Haddonfield to the ferry." Wayne pursued them with his 
usual impetuosity. The next morning, March ist, 1778, the 
enemy sent out fifty picked men for some remaining forage 
three or four miles up the Haddonfield road, who were met 
by Wayne's advancing cavalry and forced to retreat. The 
Americans dashed on to the very lines of the British, drawn 
up between Sixth and Market streets and Cooper's creek 
bridge. A sharp and spirited skirmish ensued, heavy 
firing being kept up by the British, from about where the 
Friends' meeting-house now stands, on the main body of 
the Americans, stationed in the woods along the Haddon- 
field road, which then intersected Market street at Broad- 



H 

way, where the Catholic Church now is. The English, out- 
numbering the Americans ten to one, compelled them to 
retire to the woods, but without the loss of a man, although 
the British had several wounded and one sergeant of 
grenadiers killed. As the patriots retired, an officer reined 
up his steed and, "facing the Rangers as they dashed on, 
slowly waved his sword for his attendants to retreat. The 
English Light Infantry came within fifty yards of him, 
when one of them called out, ' You are a brave fellow, 
but you must go away.' The undaunted officer, paying no 
attention to the warning, one McGill, afterwards a quarter- 
master, was ordered to fire at him. He did so, and wounded 
the horse, but the rider was unscathed, and soon joined 
his comrades in the woods a little way off."* This daring 
officer was the Count Pulaski. 

Soon afterwards, in the same month, Pulaski, whilst 
reconnoitering with a body of horsemen, almost under the 
fortifications of the British, was only saved from an ambush, 
arranged by Colonel Shaw on both sides of old Cooper 
street, near the Friends' Meeting-house, by William West, 
a patriot apprised of the danger, who, seeing him riding 
down the road some distance ahead of his men, leading 
them into the trap, waved to him to retreat. Taking the 
hint, Pulaski at once wheeled his men, and the ambuscade 
failed. Not so fortunate, however, was a party of militia 
that the British surprised about this time, at Cooper's creek 
bridge, many, after a sharp fight, being killed and the rest 
taken prisoners. Soon afterwards the enemy evacuated 
Philadelphia, the scene of hostilities shifted, and our 
immediate neighborhood had little further annoyance from 
the Red-coats. 

Long before the Revolution, Franklin spent a night 



*Mickle, page 54. 



15 

within our present Camden, of which he tells in his famous 
autobiography. In October, 1723, being a boy of but sev- 
enteen, and on his way to Philadelphia to seek employ- 
ment as a printer, he came across a boat at Burlington in 
the evening going to Philadelphia and went aboard of it. 
There being no wind, all, Franklin included, were forced to 
row the whole wa3\ About midnight, fearing that they 
had passed the unlighted town, they put ashore, and build- 
ing a fire of fence rails staid until morning, when they 
found they Vv^ere in the mouth of Cooper's creek, " a little 
above Philadelphia," where they arrived "about eight or 
nine o'clock on the Suuday morning and landed at the 
Market street wharf." Up which street, having bought 
"three great puffy rolls," he walked in his working clothes, 
" vv^ith a roll under each arm and eating the other," passing 
his future wife standing in the doorway of her father's 
house, thinking that he made "a most awkward, ridicu- 
lous appearance," which, he says, " I certainly did." 

Washington, while President, used at times to cross 
the Delaware at Cooper's Ferry and ride out Main street 
for some distance, and then turn and ride back the same 
way. On one of these rides, when near the ferry, he nearly 
frightened out of his v^^its an old Hessian, a deserter from 
the British army at the battle of Trenton, who made bold 
to ask him his name, when, bowing, he replied, " My name 
is George Washington." 

For many years after the Revolution Camden was a 
town only in name, and that only on paper, being called 
Cooper's Ferries, or simply The Ferries, until after the 
beginning of this century. A few sales of lots had been 
made and a fev/ houses began to cluster about the ferries, 
and a road or two more had been opened, but all else was 
farm or woodland. 

When this century opened not a house of worship stood 



i6 

within the present limits of Camden, In 1801, however, the 
Friends, having decided to move their place of meeting 
from their old house on Newton creek to a more central 
locality, built the brick meeting-house that stands at the 
corner of Mount Bphraim avenue and Mount Vernon street, 
the forerunner of Camden's present sixty-five or seventy 
churches ; and next, in 1810, the Methodists dedicated their 
first church at the northwest corner of Fourth and Federal 
streets, long since converted into stores, followed, in 1818, 
by the First Baptist Church, on Fourth street, and there- 
after the churches kept pace with Camden's growth. 

The mode of ferriage across the Delaware in open boats, 
established as we have seen so early in our history, remained 
without change or improvement until 1809 or 1810, when a 
small steamboat, carrying passengers only, was placed on 
the river. She was named the "Camden" and ran from 
the foot of Cooper street to the lower side of Market street, 
Philadelphia. In 1809 the ferry at Kaighn's Point was 
established, and soon a small steamboat, also carrying pas- 
sengers only, and also, it is believed, called the " Camden," 
was placed on the line. Which of the two was the first 
steamboat is doubtful. Crude as they were they were 
marvelous advances over the primitive wherries. But the 
passenger trafl&c across the river was too inconsiderable to 
keep up such a stride, and, after a few years, the ferrymen, 
taking in sail, adopted in sunmier the team boats, propelled 
by horses walking round a circle on a tread wheel, and stop- 
ping entirely for an hour at noon-time to feed the horses; and 
in the winter, when the ice in the river was not frozen solid, 
fell back upon the old wherries. It was not until 1835 
that the steam ferry boat, regularly making its trips winter 
and summer alike, became firmly established as a fixture on 
the Delaware highway. When it was proposed to build a 
steamboat powerful enough to break through ice, ' ' many 



17 

declared it as impossible as it would be to propel a boat up 
Market street hill." But the old " State Rights," with her 
eighty horse power, proved the force of Kossuth's motto: 
" Nothing is impossible to him that wills." 

Though Camden's early growth was very slow, and half 
a century after its birth it was but a small town, yet it had 
a vigor of self-assertion that compelled its recognition by 
the people of the county. The annual town meetings of 
Newton township had been held alternately here and at 
Haddonfield until 1827, when the Haddonfield people, con- 
scious of their greater voting strength, at the town meeting, 
held regularly in turn at their place, resolved to shove Cam- 
den to the wall and thereafter to meet only at Haddonfield. 
Their superior number carried the question. But he laughs 
best who laughs last, and they unconsciously aroused the 
young giant that ever afterward whipped them in many a 
hard fought battle. The Camdenians left the town meeting 
very indignant, and Jeremiah Sloan, then a talented young 
lawyer of great promise, said to the Haddonfielders, "I'll 
fix you; I will have Camden incorporated next winter. " He 
executed his threat, and at the next session of the legisla- 
ture the act was passed incorporating the city of Camden. 

Thus it was that Camden, with a population of but 1,143. 
attained her legal majority with the right to manage her 
own affairs, as she saw fit, free from the tutelage of country 
town meetings. 

This first charter was passed February i^th, 1828, and is 
entitled "An act to incorporate a part of the township of 
Newton, in the county of Gloucester." It has only eigh- 
teen sections, and, though but seventy-one years have 
passed, many of its provisions already sound quaint. It 
calls Broadway " the public road leading to Woodbury from 
the Camden Academy," and Newton avenue " the road 



i8 

leading from Kaighnton to Cooper's creek bridge," and 
Petty 's Island " Pethey's Island." It provides that the 
mayor shall be elected by the common council, and that one 
of the aldermen and one of the common council " shall 
alwaj^s be a resident of Kaighnton, and one of each of said 
oflScers shall alv/ays be a resident of the village commonly 
called ' William Cooper's Ferry '." And that the mayor, re- 
corder and aldermen shall constitute a court to be styled " the 
Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace of the city 
of Camden," having within the city all the powers that the 
county courts of Quarter Sessions have, excepting the grant- 
ing of tavern licenses, and hearing appeals in pauper cases — 
a court abolished by the act of February 29th, 1S56. 

At the first election for city officers, held March loth, 
1828, in town meeting at the Academy, which stood at Sixth 
and Llarket streets, where the George Genge public school 
now is, the following common councilmen were chosen : 
James Duer, from Cooper's Ferry; John Lawrence, Bbenezer 
Toole and Richard Fetters, from Camden, and Joseph 
Kaighn, from Kaighnton, James Duer and Joseph Kaighn 
declining to serve, at a special election, held on the fifth 
of the following April, Edward Doughtery and Richard B. 
Champion were chosen in their place. The new Council 
held its first meeting on March 13th, 1828, and elected 
Samuel Lanning first Mayor of Camden. 

The new municipalit}^ however, had but little of the 
appearance of a city. The three villages of which it was 
composed — Camden proper. Cooper's Point and Kaighn's 
Point — remained separated by cultivated farms and retained 
their peculiar characteristics for many years. Extending 
but a short distance from the river, all the territory east of 
them to Cooper's creek was as much country as any other 
part of the county, and where used for purposes of hus- 



19 

bandry only, was, by the charter, exempted from taxation 
for the support of the city.* 

I cannot better contrast then and now than by bringing 
to light from the musty first minutes of Council two trans- 
actions. On April 23d, 1828, "The Council rented of 
Richard Fetters for one j^ear the room over his store for the 
purpose of a temporar}^ Council and Court hall, for the sum 
of twenty-five dollars per annum or six dollars per quarter." 
And on June 5th, 1829, the committee appointed to make 
" a fair expose of the receipts and expenditures of the cor- 
poration up to this date ' ' reported to Council that there had 
come into Samuel Lanning's hands 13,456.23, and paid out 
by him ^3,512.49, leaving a balance due him of ^56.26. 
Can the groaning taxpayers of to-day, with their load of 
1:2,246,800 of bonded indebtedness, help wishing in some 
respects for those good old times ? 

About this time the desire for a more speedy convey- 
ance than the old stage coach was cropping out in many 
places throughout the country, and very general inquiry 
was being made into the feasibility of railroads to meet the 
want. During 1827 the project of a railway to connect 
Philadelphia and New York began to be talked of in earn- 
est. Meetings were held in the Camden Academy of those 
favoring the enterprise, preliminary surveys made, and such 
general interest excited as finally resulted in the Legisla- 
ture granting, on February 4th, 1830, the charter for " The 
Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Com- 
pany." The company was soon organized and the road 
begun, and in 1834 the first train ran into Camden. This 
was a very marked event for the young city. The railroad 
was the longest then built in this country and its comple- 
tion a matter of great rejoicing. People kept watch to see 



*L,. 1828, page 127. 



20 

the trains arrive, even those as far off as Kaighn's Point, no 
houses then intervening, going to the top of their houses to 
view the novel sight. 

Camden, not satisfied with being a cit}^, now began to 
think that there should be a new county created with it as 
the shire-town, and actively pushed the project. This 
excited great opposition throughout the county. Indigna- 
tion meetings were held at Woodbury and other places. 
The Camden people had to fight almost unaided their up- 
hill battle. They claimed it as a necessary measure ' ' to 
accommodate the fast swelling population of the north and 
northwestern townships, and partly to secure to West Jer- 
sey her just share of influence in the State government." 
At last, after a hard fight under the lead of Captain John 
W. Mickle, an uncompromising Democrat, they won and 
got the Legislature, which was Democratic, to pass, on 
March 13, 1844, under the plea that the new county would 
be Democratic, the act setting it off from Old Gloucester, 
and had it named after their own city, which was to be 
the seat of justice for one year and until an election 
could be had. But the people throughout the country 
were so incensed at the city's again foiling them that at the 
first election they voted, irrespective of party, against the 
Democratic nominees, recognizing no other issue than Cam- 
den and Anti-Camden, and for fifteen years the Democrats 
never carried the county. For many years afterwards, 
whenever Captain Mickle went to Trenton, he was taunted 
about his Democratic county ; and to this day Camden 
county is politically anti-Democratic. 

The same antagonism again cropped out at the perman- 
ent fixing of the county seat. Camden, of course, nomi- 
nated herself, and all the rest of the county, boiling over in 
rage at the very idea, nominated Long-A-Coming and 
carried the election. But the Camden people would not 



21 

stay down, and in 1848, aided largely by the pugnacity and 
ability of the late Abraham Browning of honored memory, 
had a law passed directing a new election. 

The second fight was doubly bitter. It was again the 
whole of the county against the city, but Camden had well 
encased herself in armor against the shafts of her opponents 
in her unaided tilt against the field, and came out victorious 
by a large majority. The vanquished, as usual, raised the 
cry of fraud, alleging that more majority was cast for Cam- 
den than she had inhabitants, men and women and children, 
and that, themselves ashamed of the size of their vote, the 
Camden people threw two barrels of votes in the river, and 
kept their boats fast to the wharves at Philadelphia, pre- 
venting hundreds of legitimate voters from coming across 
the river. Sober history will have to admit that on that 
day Camden's growth took a marvelous upward bound, if 
the number of votes polled in the city be a fair indication 
of its population. 

This last election definitely settled the contest, the 
country people submitted to the inevitable, and to-day 
admit that, however unfairly it may have been made, the 
choice was a wise one. 

Immediately after the settlement of this question a 
strong rivalry sprang up between John W. Mickle, President 
of the Federal Street Ferry Company, and Abraham Brown- 
ing, heavily interested with his brothers in the Market 
Street Ferry, over the location of the Court House, each 
striving to have it placed on the street leading to the ferry 
in which he was interested, in the hope of turning to that 
ferry the trend of travel. The struggle was finally settled 
by placing the Court House equi-distant from each ferry. 
And this is the reason it was built where it is, on the lot 
nearest to the ferries that extended from Federal to Market 
street, and placed exactly midway between the two streets. 



22 

In 1850 Camden obtained a new charter with enlarged 
powers but no increase of territory, and began to grow with 
.'considerable energy, until the horrible burning of the ferry- 
boat " New Jersey," on the night of March 15th, 1856, with 
its holocaust of sixty-one lives, at once checked migrations 
from Philadelphia, while the panic of 1857 following, com- 
pleted the blow to its prosperity. Then the doubt and un- 
certainty of the impending rebellion, and the exhaustion of 
the struggle when entered upon, protracted the stagnation 
and our city lay in a torpor until late after the collapse of 
the war, the prosperous times thawed it into new life, that, 
bursting the chrysalis of the boundaries of its original incor- 
poration of 1828, reached out and grasped, under its revised 
charter of 1871, new territor}^, increasing its size three fold. 
And in the same year, when the Camden Horse Railroad 
Company started its passenger cars, came what all had been 
hoping for, public conveyances enabling everyone to ride 
from one end of the city to the other, so evidently supply- 
ing a public want that the IVesl Jersey Press was enabled to 
thus exultantly describe the opening of the lines to public 
travel: " Federal street had a huge load of excitement to 
stagger under on Saturday last, and the street was crowded 
with spectators from early morn to dewy eve, while the curb- 
stone corners in particular were the resorts of shouting boys 
and wondering men. A long wished for event came to pass, 
and a new era in the growth of the city's conveniences was 
successfully inaugurated. In a word the new horse cars 
began to run. Let us mark the date, November 25th, 1871. 
Such occurrences as these are mile posts in the history of 
our city's progress, and should be recorded as worthy of 
special eclat." 

I may well stop here, since the happenings of the last 
quarter of a century too nearly touch the present to need to 
be recalled to your recollection. Such then, brokenly told. 



23 

is Camden's story of the past. To-day, arousing from the 
stagnation following the panic of '93, our town does not 
have to seek new territory, but has only to receive that ten- 
dered to it by its neighbors, conscious that under its protect- 
ing segis their prosperity and happiness will be enhanced. 
And enlarged in boundary one-third and in population one- 
sixth, under the act of March 24th, 1899, annexing, at the 
request of its inhabitants, the town of Stockton, Camden, 
covering now a territory of some twelve square miles with a 
population of seventy-five thousand, the metropolis of West 
Jersey, following the law of growth of all live municipal- 
ities, moves on to its greater, and with its improved streets, 
its fine water, its parks, libraries and high school, to its 
higher development. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 205 193 n J^ 



